and you say that i hurt you in a voice like a prayer, leliana

[vulgaris]

VulgariS

take me, take me back to your bed. i love you so much that it hurts my head.
say, i don't mind you under my skin. oh, let the bad parts in, the bad parts in.

He doesn’t know what occurred in Pangea but he saw the dream same as everyone else. Being a butcher for someone he doesn’t know never interested him and he always loathed magicians anyhow. A bluff, he thought at the time. Had he known that Leliana was caught in the battle, he would have stayed by her side and torn apart anyone who tried to harm her. But he was too busy languishing in his cage and feeling sorry for himself. He wasn’t there to drag her away to safety when everything lost control. What a miserable failure for a husband.

And yet she presses against him like nothing has happened. She says his name and it feels something like absolution, like the quiet death of his sins, mumbled gentle against him. It becomes easy to forget the awful world continuing on all around them for just a moment before she shoves him away. He staggers back, furrowing his brows in confusion as he looks up at her. The wounds had just begun to heal and now they've ripped open again. He’s choking on the agony flooding up into his throat and it burns all the way through his head. Now it’s her turn to banish him, it seems. He takes a step back, obeying like the spineless worm he’s always believed himself to be.

Shiya was right. No one could ever love a monster like him.
How stupid, how arrogant to believe miracles could happen to him.

“I understand. You don’t have to pretend to love me,” he says as he lowers his head to avoid her gaze. The words Shiya said to him play on a constant loop in his head, mocking him with her cruel laughter. But his legs won’t move and he can’t bring himself to leave her side again. Even in the haze of misery, he believes it would be worth getting sick to make sure she’s alright. “At least let me walk with you so I know you’ve got somewhere safe to stay. I’ll leave you alone after that.”

His body yearns for hers the way ancient leviathans crave the dark, silent depths of the oceans. Primal, innate, and older than time itself. He wants to sink into her and sleep there for centuries in her perfect embrace. But she doesn’t want that. Vulgaris was only a stand-in for something much greater than whatever he thought he could offer. It’s only a few feet but it feels like a canyon has opened up between them.

“If Shiya ever tries to hunt you, I’ll rip her throat out. Even if you’re done with me.”

@[leliana]